Meadowland (2015)

Those who didn't like the ending, or said it left them hanging, just didn't get it.First off, I think the movie was, most importantly, REAL. It was how real people, in the real world cope, not Hollywood people, or how Hollywood THINKS real people would. The real world is ugly, dirty, and selfish, but can also be beautiful, innocent, and full of wonder if you look at all of it and don't just focus on the negative. Its about a couple falling apart and doing things they normally would not do. With her the cutting, having sex with a stranger, smoking DMT, and listening to metal. Him, using his pull as a cop to find his meeting friend's daughter's killer's address. The loser brother-in-law whose life is a mess (doesn't everyone family have someone like this?). As for the ending, she promised to take him to Africa to see the elephants, but instead actually ends up finding him an elephant! And by doing so, she looks into the elephant's eyes and realizes that she lost her baby too. They lock eyes in mutual pain, loss, grieving, understanding. In that moment, she is able to connect with another mother who understands what it is like to lose a child. So he has his meetings, she got an elephant. What more do you want from an ending? Want to see if they let her adopt the kid? If she went back to teaching? She still is going to need a LOT of work, either years of therapy or group, an elephant can't fix broken. But anyway, who cares? That would be the boring part. May as well leave it on a high note.

Meadowlands is outstanding on many levels. It had a risk of being unbalanced and overly melodramatic or otherwise missing the point of the reality of what the film -through the writer- intended to convey which was the story of people who do go through this reality. While it had flaws if you looked hard for them, what stood out was what could be attributed to the direction, sound score, cinematic filming, and balanced overall presentation of the story. The actors all did what really talented actors can do. It was a very well done and worth seeing film. (Well, need more lines to submit review.) Regarding two things worth mentioning, The camera work was with a very fast lens and the ending scene was outstanding in how it brought the story to a conclusion.

"Meadowland" is a film by first-time director Reed Morano, a cinematographer by trade, responsible in part for such notable indies as "Frozen River." Morano has fashioned a deeply atmospheric tale from a screenplay by first time feature writer, Chris Rossi, chronicling the downward spiral of a husband and wife whose child is kidnapped by a pedophile (similar to the true-life Etan Patz case). The story begins in a harrowing scene where the couple stops at a gas station in upstate New York with their young son in the back seat. The kid goes to the bathroom and doesn't come out—when the father opens the door, he discovers his son has vanished. We then flash forward a year later and the child is still missing and the parents, Sarah and Phil (played most intensely and convincingly by Oliva Wilde and Luke Wilson), are coping from the fallout of the overwhelming tragedy in their lives.The great strength of the film (and perhaps also its greatest weakness), is that the focus is on the internal arcs of the principals (as opposed to the conflict between the two). When we first meet Sarah, an elementary school teacher, she's on lithium and has convinced herself that her son is still alive. Phil, a NYC police officer, castigates his wife for denying reality (as it's becoming more apparent, due to a police investigation of a pedophile under surveillance upstate who may be implicated in the abduction, that the little boy is never coming home).In one of the strongest scenes in the film, Sarah goes looking for an animal cracker that her son was eating on the day he disappeared, and finds it wedged in a crack in the back seat of their car. Attempting to reconnect with her son in any way, she ravenously wolfs the cracker down, satiating herself for a moment despite the grief that never goes away.The plot eventually focuses on Sarah's obsession with Adam, a young student at her school, who has Asperger's Syndrome. The child is treated poorly by her foster parents—Sarah follows the mother in one scene and helps her out with money after she's unable to pay for groceries at a convenience store. I'm not exactly sure where that plot strand was leading—later on, after throwing out her medications, Sarah has a manic episode where she ends up having sex with the boy's father (again I suppose, indicative of her downward spiral). Meanwhile Phil appears at first to getting himself together by attending a support group for parents of murdered children. But like Sarah, he is not immune to the deleterious effects of the tragedy that has impinged upon his life. In a subtle scene, he kicks over a roadside memorial to a deceased father—his way of "coping" is lashing out (as opposed to Sarah's self-destructiveness). Later Phil inappropriately provides one of his fellow support group members with the address of the drunken driver who killed his daughter. It's obvious that Phil has lost his moral compass despite the fact that he's supposed to uphold the law as a law enforcement officer (a public servant).Morano's camera work as well as her direction prove that she's an extremely talented filmmaker to be reckoned with in the future. Meadowland's problem is Rossi's uneven script which lacks a great deal of conflict and rising tension. Instead, the focus is on just how low these characters can sink as they cope with the immediate reality of their missing child. Little is added by a subplot involving a visit by Phil's unstable brother Tim, who Sarah and Phil put up in their apartment, while he is attempting to get his life together. I won't reveal the ending entirely but suffice it to say there is a measure of redemption for Sarah involving an elephant, a class of mammal that Adam, the young Asperger's child, has shown great affection for earlier on (Sarah's self-obsession at the denouement with her concomitant lack of attention to Adam, remains a disturbing scene). Phil perhaps gains his measure of redemption when the police investigation into their child's disappearance, is resolved. Meadowland is primarily recommended for the intense, tragic atmosphere it invokes. The lack of a true, discernible plot and focus exclusively on the principals' internal arcs, are its Achilles heels.

This film was heart wrenching but beautiful.It's a look at the story of how a couple cope with the loss of their son, and the pernicious effects of grief over time. The title itself, Meadowland, seems to be the mental land where the suffering protagonists go to escape, the dream land that exists to maintain the last shreds of hope in the face of overwhelming pain.It makes an excellent job of conveying the gradual deterioration of the ability to cope with not knowing, not being able to say goodbye and the juxtaposition of the need for closure with the incredible fear of accepting the inevitable.It's brilliantly acted and well scripted. The pace is slow but filled with mounting intensity. The film holds its breath, never spilling into melodrama, but holding in an enormous sense of tension and conflict, thus creating a direct line of empathy for the situation of the main characters.But it's not all doom and gloom, well it is all doom and gloom, but it examines that darkness at the place from which it emanates; love.Poetic and sincere.